A flaw was found in Ceph RGW's STS (Security Token Service) session token implementation. The STS tokens use the same unauthenticated AES-128-CBC encryption as CephX, which lacks message authentication and uses a hardcoded initialization vector. Because there is no integrity protection on the tokens, an attacker who holds any valid unprivileged STS token can perform a CBC bit-flip attack to modify the token contents and escalate to full RGW admin privileges. This requires only that STS is enabled (rgw_s3_auth_use_sts = true) and that the attacker has a single valid STS token. Successful exploitation grants complete control over the RGW service, including reading, writing, and deleting all objects and buckets.
Metrics
Affected Vendors & Products
Advisories
No advisories yet.
Fixes
Solution
No solution given by the vendor.
Workaround
No workaround given by the vendor.
References
History
Thu, 20 Aug 2026 00:15:00 +0000
| Type | Values Removed | Values Added |
|---|---|---|
| Description | A flaw was found in Ceph RGW's STS (Security Token Service) session token implementation. The STS tokens use the same unauthenticated AES-128-CBC encryption as CephX, which lacks message authentication and uses a hardcoded initialization vector. Because there is no integrity protection on the tokens, an attacker who holds any valid unprivileged STS token can perform a CBC bit-flip attack to modify the token contents and escalate to full RGW admin privileges. This requires only that STS is enabled (rgw_s3_auth_use_sts = true) and that the attacker has a single valid STS token. Successful exploitation grants complete control over the RGW service, including reading, writing, and deleting all objects and buckets. | |
| Title | ceph: ceph: RGW STS session tokens vulnerable to CBC bit-flip attack enabling admin privilege escalation | |
| Weaknesses | CWE-327 | |
| References |
| |
| Metrics |
threat_severity
|
cvssV3_1
|
Projects
Sign in to view the affected projects.
No data.
No data.
No data.
OpenCVE Enrichment
No data.
Weaknesses